The Cheater

by R. L. Stine

  “You should. Of course you should,” Dan said quickly. “It’s the right thing to do. I think you’ll feel a lot better.”

  “I know I will,” said Carter. “I just hope Daddy doesn’t completely lose it. Dan, I need moral support. Somebody to help me get through this. Will you come over today? Daddy has always liked you, and you being here will give me the courage I need to actually go through with this.”

  Dan was silent.

  “Please?”

  “Of course, Carter,” he replied. “I’d be glad to help you. I’ll come over whenever you want.”

  “Thanks, Dan. Come over after lunch, okay? Daddy’s always in a better mood after he’s eaten.”

  “Okay. See you around two.”

  “I’ll be here. Dan, thanks for staying with me through all this. It’s meant a lot to me—it really has.”

  “I’d do anything for you, Carter. You know that.”

  Carter was waiting for Dan when the doorbell rang two hours later. She opened the door, took his hand, and pulled him into the house.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, squeezing his hand. “Daddy is in the study now,” she said nervously.

  “Are you ready?” he asked her.

  She nodded.

  They walked to the study. The door was closed. Carter knocked gently.

  They heard the judge call, “Come in.”

  Hesitantly, Carter opened the door. She didn’t step into the room, just put her head inside. “Daddy, are you busy?”

  “Not really, Carter,” said Judge Phillips. “Come on in.”

  Carter nodded to Dan. They stepped into the study and closed the door.

  “Hello, Judge Phillips,” said Dan.

  Carter cleared her throat. “Um, Daddy, I need to talk to you. I—I have something important to say.” Her voice came out high and shrill.

  She glanced up at Dan. Her chin was trembling. He gave her an encouraging smile.

  “I’ve done a terrible thing, Daddy,” Carter stammered. “Actually, I’ve done a lot of terrible things. First of all, about the math achievement test—”

  Her voice broke. She swallowed hard. “I’m sorry, Daddy. This isn’t easy.”

  The judge said nothing. He kept his eyes trained on her and listened.

  “I cheated on the math test, Daddy. I mean, I didn’t take it over the second time. Someone took it for me.” She paused.

  “Who took it for you?” asked the judge.

  “Adam Messner. He went to Waynesbridge and pretended to be me. He took the test in my place.”

  Carter lowered her eyes to the floor. Her hands were shaking.

  The judge frowned severely. His face was hard. “So it was Adam who scored seven hundred thirty on your test, not you?”

  Carter nodded. She glanced at Dan. He avoided her eyes.

  “That’s not the worst of it,” Carter went on. “I have something else to tell you, Daddy. Something much more important.”

  The judge sat silently, waiting.

  Carter took a deep breath.

  “I did it, Daddy. I had no choice. He was blackmailing me.”

  The judge stared hard into her eyes. “Carter, you did what?”

  “I killed Adam Messner.”

  Chapter 23

  Carter raised her eyes to Dan. He was staring at her, his mouth open.

  But after a long moment, Dan composed himself. He crossed the room and stood in front of the judge’s desk.

  “Judge Phillips,” he said, “you can help Carter, right? I mean, she’s your daughter. You can deal with it, right? She won’t have to go to jail, will she?”

  The judge’s face went slack. He remained silent. All the light faded from his eyes.

  “I’m sure Carter didn’t mean to do it, sir,” Dan said, panic in his voice. “It could have been self-defense, right? Maybe it’s not really murder.”

  The judge shook his head. “The courts will decide that. At her trial.”

  “No!” cried Dan. “Judge Phillips, you have to help her. You’re a judge. You can do something. You can get them to go easy on her!”

  “She took a life,” said the judge. “That is a terrible crime. So Carter must pay. She’s my daughter, and I love her, but I won’t use my influence in any way.”

  He paused. Then he sighed heavily. Carter waited to see what would happen next.

  “There’s no point in putting it off,” the judge went on. “I’m sorry, Carter. I have to do this. I have no choice.”

  He picked up the telephone and started to dial the police.

  Dan pressed his hand on the phone, cutting off the call. “Wait,” he said. “I can’t let you do this.”

  The judge set down the receiver. He raised his eyes to Dan.

  “Carter didn’t kill Adam,” Dan said heatedly.

  “What do you mean?” said the judge. “She says she did it. She just admitted it.”

  “No,” Dan said. “She didn’t do it. I don’t know why she says she did.”

  “Well?” Carter’s father demanded. “Then who did it?”

  Dan cleared his throat. “I did.”

  With a loud sob, Carter ran to Dan and flung her arms around him. Dan pulled away gently and sank into the leather armchair.

  “What’s all this about? Please explain, Dan,” the judge asked softly.

  “I—I killed him,” Dan said.

  “Start at the beginning. Please,” Judge Phillips said, folding his hands on the desktop.

  “Adam was driving Carter crazy,” Dan began. “He was blackmailing her, taking terrible advantage of her. He was holding this cheating thing over her head, threatening her with it every day. He was ruining her life. I hated to see her so miserable.”

  Dan stared at the floor. “I was worried about her too. Worried about her and me. I was afraid that Adam would get so tangled up in Carter’s life that eventually he’d take her away from me. I know that’s what he wanted.”

  Carter felt her face grow hot. It had almost happened that way.

  “I begged Carter not to give Adam any more money. I begged her to stay away from him. But she was afraid of him, with good reason. And money was the only thing that kept him quiet.

  “I thought that if I talked to Adam, maybe I could get him to stop bothering her. I had to try, anyway. So I drove to Fear Street, to his house that Saturday to see him.

  “When I got there, I saw Carter’s car pulling away. She had just been there. I knew she must have given him more money. I was so upset.

  “I parked around the corner, so Carter wouldn’t see me. I waited until she was out of sight. Then I walked up to Adam’s house and rang the bell.

  “I had no idea what I was going to do or say. All I knew was I was furious with him. He was ruining Carter’s future—and mine too. Because I always thought Carter and I would be together.”

  He swallowed hard and looked at Carter. She sat across from him now, listening. She gave him an encouraging nod.

  “Anyway, I had a feeling Adam wouldn’t be very happy to see me, and he wasn’t. I pushed my way into the house. I told him to stop blackmailing Carter and leave her alone. I told him not to bother her again.

  “He grinned at me. He acted calm, but I could tell there was rage bottled up inside him. It was slowly coming to the surface.

  “He said, ‘Don’t tell me what to do. I’ve got a good thing going with Carter right now—if you know what I mean. And it isn’t going to end until I’m ready to end it. So run on back to your country club, kid.’

  “That’s when I really started to lose it. I felt so terrible for you, Carter. I was so sorry that you’d gotten mixed up with this creep.

  “Then things got crazy. Out of control. I said, Today is the last you’ll ever see of her, do you understand me? From now on you’ll leave her alone!’

  “He pulled away from me and took a few steps backward. He opened a drawer and pulled out a gun. He pointed it at me. I couldn’t believe it.

  “I never expected him to
have a gun. I—I didn’t think. I jumped him and wrestled him for the gun.

  “There was a loud pop, and suddenly Adam grabbed his stomach and doubled over. His body—it crumpled to the floor.

  “I glanced down. I was holding the gun in my hand. Somehow, it had gone off.

  “When I turned to Adam, he was lying in a pool of blood. There was a big hole in his chest, and the blood was spouting up from it. Blood was everywhere.

  “I—I freaked out. I just dropped the gun and ran.”

  Dan put his head in his hands and held it for a moment. Neither Carter nor her father moved. The room was silent except for the flapping of the window curtains. Outside, Carter could hear the drone of a lawn mower.

  Dan lifted his head. He took a deep breath and went on.

  “I was so panicky, I wasn’t thinking straight. I didn’t know where to go, or what to do. Somehow I found myself here. Some instinct told me I had to see you, Carter.

  “But no one was home. So I waited. You didn’t come home until after dark. I was going to tell you what had happened, Carter. I really was.

  “But then the police came. I thought they came for me, but instead they questioned you. I was sure my fingerprints were all over that gun. But I guess after that struggle, they were probably so smeared up the police couldn’t identify them.”

  He paused. Swallowed.

  “And then you handed me an alibi, Carter,” he said. “You didn’t want the police to know about you and Adam, so you said you were studying with me all day. You had no idea that I’d been to see him too. You had no idea that you were protecting me.

  “I knew that if I confessed to killing Adam, all of your secrets would come out. Everyone would find out about the cheating. And you were so desperate to hide it. I started to think that maybe I could get away with it. Maybe we both could.”

  Carter glanced at her father. He was watching Dan.

  “But I’d never let you take the blame for me, Carter,” said Dan. “When I saw how much trouble you were in today, I had to confess. I’d never do anything to hurt you.”

  The judge leaned back in his chair, his gaze on Carter. She stood up and put her arms around Dan.

  “See, Daddy,” Carter said. “I was right. I told you he would do the right thing. I knew Dan would confess.”

  Chapter 24

  Dan gaped at Carter, confused. “Huh? What are you talking about?”

  Carter stood up and carefully pulled something from her jeans pocket. The locket.

  “Hey,” Dan said, taking it from her. “Where did you find that?”

  “Sheila Coss gave it to me,” said Carter. “She found it in Adam’s house—next to his body.”

  Dan raised a hand to his forehead. “It must have fallen out of my pocket while Adam and I were fighting.”

  “I recognized it right away, as soon as Sheila showed it to me,” said Carter. “From the window of the jewelry shop. Remember?”

  Dan had asked her which necklace she would choose, if she could have any of them. Carter had chosen the locket.

  She smiled at Dan. “You had it engraved and everything.”

  Dan’s face fell.

  “When I saw the locket, I knew you had been there, Dan,” Carter told him. “And I knew I couldn’t let this thing go on any longer. So late last night I told Daddy everything. I told him about the cheating, the blackmail, the lies—everything. And I told him that I knew you had something to do with Adam’s death.”

  The judge nodded. “I was ready to call the police right then and there,” he said. “But Carter insisted you would do the right thing when the time came. She and I cooked up this little confession drama to test you, to see how far you’d go to protect yourself.”

  He paused. “You passed the test, Dan. I believe what you told us about Adam’s death, and that you didn’t mean to kill him. But we will have to talk to the police about this.”

  Carter stared intently at Dan’s troubled face. Poor Dan, she thought. He’s in all this trouble, just because of me!

  She leaned forward on the desktop and asked, “What’s going to happen to him, Daddy?”

  “I don’t know. But I think we can make a pretty good case that Adam’s death was accidental, or at least that Dan acted in self-defense. After all, Adam was the one who pulled a gun on Dan. I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

  Carter stepped around the desk to kiss her father now. “Thanks, Daddy.”

  Dan stood up and shook the judge’s hand. “Thank you, sir. Thank you very much.”

  The rest of the day was a blur of activity. Judge Phillips took Carter and Dan to the police station, where they each gave their statements and answered endless questions. The judge found Dan an excellent lawyer.

  Mrs. Phillips was horrified, of course, at having her daughter mixed up in such a scandal.

  “They’ll be dragging our name through the mud in the papers!” she cried tearfully at the dinner table that night. “I just hope they don’t kick us out of the club!”

  Carter rolled her eyes. The judge tried to comfort his wife. “Don’t worry, dear,” he told her. “They wouldn’t dare kick us out of the club. Who would organize all their events?”

  After dinner Carter went up to her room to change. She planned to go to Dan’s house to hang out, to keep him company, and to talk things over.

  She was brushing her hair when she heard a soft knock at her bedroom door. “Come in,” she said.

  Her father opened the door and walked in. “Hello, dear,” he said. “May I sit down for a minute?”

  Carter nodded. Her father sat beside her on the bed. He cleared his throat and tugged at his collar, as if it were too tight. Carter realized she’d never seen him look so uncomfortable.

  “I came to apologize to you, Carter,” he began. “I had no idea that you felt so much pressure in school, and I think it’s mostly my fault. All that talk about Princeton, and my demands about your test scores. What I really meant to do was show you how much confidence I had in you. I had no idea I was pushing you so hard. I’m very sorry.”

  Carter gave him a warm smile. Her father smiled back. He put his arm around her.

  “The next time something is bothering you, or you have a problem, please come and tell me,” he said.

  “I will, Daddy,” said Carter. “I promise.”

  Carter was sitting on the floor at Dan’s house, a chess board spread out between them. Dan moved his queen.

  “Check,” he said.

  Carter groaned. “I can’t believe it. You’re beating me at chess!”

  “That’s only because you didn’t cheat this time,” Dan said. “What’s going on? You always cheat at chess.”

  Carter moved her pawn. “I think I’ve learned my lesson,” she said.

  Dan glanced at the board and smiled. Then he moved his queen again and said, “Checkmate!”

  About the Author

  “Where do you get your ideas?”

  That’s the question that R. L. Stine is asked most often. “I don’t know where my ideas come from,” he says. “But I do know that I have a lot more scary stories in my mind that I can’t wait to write.”

  So far, R.L. has written nearly three dozen mysteries and thrillers for young people, all of them bestsellers.

  R.L. grew up in Columbus, Ohio. Today he lives in an apartment near Central Park in New York City with his wife, Jane, and thirteen-year-old son, Matt.

  THE NIGHTMARES

  NEVER END … WHEN YOU VISIT

  FEAR STREET®

  Next … SUNBURN

  Claudia Walker thought spending the week with her friends, getting the perfect tan at Maria Drexell’s cliffside beach house, would be fun. And at first it is. The luxurious house is on a beautiful, deserted strip of land, and the girls are pretty much left to care for themselves.

  Then strange things begin to happen. Mysterious shadows are seen in the guest house. Horrible accidents occur on the beach and in the house.

  Claudia knows they�
�re not “accidents.” She’s sure somebody is out to get them … out to kill them. Their week of “fun in the sun” has turned dark and deadly!

  FEAR STREET®

  R.L. Stine

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  □ THE BEST FRIEND...............73866-6/$3.

  □ THE CHEATER.....................73867-4/$3.

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  CHEERLEADERS